Sep. 7, 2008 11:00 PM

Nicole Bennett, right, of Afton, Minn., and Sara Lynch of Port Huron, Mich., scrape old plaster from the walls of the VFW Hall on Forest Avenue on Sept. 2. The women are part of a crew of Americorps volunteers that arrived in Fond du Lac last month to offer flood disaster relief in the form of cleanup and mold abatement. / The Reporter photo by Patrick Flood

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The Reporter

Mold mitigation continues in Fond du Lac area homes that have not recovered from flood damage.

Close to 200 residents are still without natural gas service, many basements remain covered in dried remnants of the flood, and others are damaged to the point they are uninhabitable.

A second team of Americorps volunteers, 10 in all, arrived in the area on Aug. 24 to relieve crews working on projects scattered throughout the city. Temporary housing for the volunteers has been set up at the Fond du Lac County Fairgrounds.

"We've been working a lot with low-income people and the elderly, concentrating on helping those with the greatest needs," said Americorps volunteer Sarah Shelton of Indiana.

A priority are homes that experienced sewage contamination, she noted.

Last week, volunteers were working inside houses along Doty and Harrison streets, near the Fond du Lac river; along Main Street near Lakeside Park, and on Elm Street. On Tuesday, they cleaned up the interior of the flood-damaged VFW Hall, situated on Forest Avenue.

"We been doing two or three houses a day for the past two weeks, picking up where the last team left off," Shelton explained.

Out of sight, out of mind

UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief) groups have also been providing disaster assistance in areas throughout Fond du Lac County, led by Rev. Ellen Rasmussen from Community United Methodist Church in North Fond du Lac.

Shelton noted a variety of reason homes have been left unattended and subsequently filled with a type of mold potentially dangerous to people with allergies and weakened immune systems.

"Some people have tried to remove it themselves, but they just wipe it off and you really have to scrub it. You'd be surprised how many people just don't go in their basements, thinking out of sight, out of mind," she said.

Some of the homes remain as they were the day of the flood, filled with all the possessions the homeowner can't part with. A handful of homeowners that need assistance use English as a second language, and have been hesitant to ask for help, Shelton explained.

The Americorps team is expected to be working in the area for the next two weeks. All 10 crewmembers, from an Americorps campus in Maryland, gave up their vacation time to work in Fond du Lac.

Door to door

Dressed in tie-back suits, wearing respirators and goggles, Bre Klubben of Ely, Minn., said crew members, trained in mold remediation, take all safety precautions before descending into mold infested basements.

"Once we get down there, we pull everything out, deconstruct paneling and sheet rock, then go in with scrubbing solution. We clean at least two feet above the water level," she said.

The City of Fond du Lac has agreed to pick up flood-damaged materials left outside homes that have been cleaned by disaster assistants.

When seen on a surface, like a wall, the mold itself appears deep black in color and often looks like dried dirt. On a rag or sponge it appears light green in color when wiped off.

Some houses have mold in them from the floor clear up to the ceiling, said Americorps team leader Christiane Cannon.

"Some people are not inclined to ask for help. We've been doing assessment of neighborhoods, which means if we find one house on a street that is heavily damaged, we go door to door through the neighborhood to find people who may need help but haven't asked," she remarked.

Be a contributor

Cannon said she does the work to give, instead of receive.

"After I got done with college, I wanted to see more of the country and be more of a contributor than a taker," she said.

Shelton, who worked in Louisiana as a disaster assistant after Hurricane Katrina, described the satisfaction she gets from her "care work" in aiding people who find themselves in despair after experiencing a disaster.

"Even if I can just stop in and visit with them, it means something to people," she confirmed.